Meet Nib et al

This is Nib.  Nib is a spotted leopard gecko.  She belongs to the school.  She is icky.  On top of icky...not that bright.

 Being that Nib is a living creature...icky as she is...she must be fed.

Meet Nib's food.  Double ICK!  These are crickets.  They are ALIVE.  Now crickets might be all fine and dandy to listen to on a summer's evening.  From a distance.  They don't however instill the warm fuzzy feelings inside you when you hear them crunched on.  EWWWWW...see I told you!

So here is what I am supposed to do.  I am to put my hand in the cricket container (ewww) pick one up (eww eww) roll the stupid squirmy thing whom I'm sure knows he is going to his death in a calcium dish and then hold it in front of Nib and hope that she only grabs it and not my finger too.  I can't be sure but I'm thinking if the lizard grabbed onto my finger I might owe the school a replacement...  I am to repeat this process SIX times every three days.

Now I try to do as I'm told.  I try to be responsible.  In this instance however I have to fess up and say I made up my own feeding technique.  Let's just say it involved a spoon, a lot of squealing, maybe a few tears, one or two cuss words and a lizard that only ate half of what she should.  Ungrateful icky icky creature!  Here I am SPOON FEEDING her, putting the poor live double icky thing on death row in front of her and she refuses.  Can I just ask here....how do these geckos survive outside of captivity?  Because the crickets put up a respectable fight it took some chasing them around the tank if she didn't take them right away.  They would be under her feet, on her back, darn near under her nose and she didn't seem to recognize they were there.  I'm thinkin the thing is not right in the head and as I say that you might be thinking that it had found the right respite home however....I disagree.  Anything that can't recognize its own food really has no business living.  I'm just putting it out there....

I will also have to own up to the fact that I did not roll the cricket in the calcium bowl as short of gluing it to the underside of the spoon there was no way to do so.

Should the cricket develop osteoporosis we will all know who to blame.

I'm good with that.

You might be asking the question...well why are you taking care of the gecko and not the child who volunteered to babysit it for the summer?  My response to that is I. KNOW. RIGHT.  The answer to that is the child is away at sailing camp.  So in essence we could now ask ourselves....what is worse....feeding an icky creature its doubly icky LIVE meals a couple of times while the child is away OR have the child home expecting to be entertained, laying on the couch complaining of being bored, fighting with the five year old all the while unable for whatever reason to pick up a dish or dare I say run a vacuum?  You see my point.